


you and all your vibrant youth (call it loneliness)

by interropunct



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bodyswap, M/M, takes place roughly between TDT and BLLB
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-06-16 21:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15446289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interropunct/pseuds/interropunct
Summary: Ronan woke in an instant and knew immediately that something was wrong. It was a pair of skills honed from years where the moments between sleeping and waking were dangerous to himself and others. He clenched his hands first, feeling for whatever he’d brought with him. But they were empty. They were empty and they ached like he’d been holding tight to something for far too long. In fact, his whole body ached. His hair ached, which was what finally tipped him off. It was brushing against his ears for one thing and it wasn’t soft and curly as it had once been, but crisp and gritty, like it had been plied with bar soap and a lifetime of hard water. Which was, of course, enough for him to know where he was. Who he was.Ronan and Adam take a walk in each other’s shoes.





	1. the way you use your body (we all have a hunger)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @alchemicalwords on Tumblr for the quick beta! Any remaining mistakes are mine.

Ronan woke in an instant and knew immediately that something was wrong. It was a pair of skills honed from years where the moments between sleeping and waking were dangerous to himself and others. He clenched his hands first, feeling for whatever he’d brought with him. But they were empty. They were empty and they ached like he’d been holding tight to something for far too long. In fact, his whole body ached. His _hair_ ached, which was what finally tipped him off. It was brushing against his ears for one thing and it wasn’t soft and curly as it had once been, but crisp and gritty, like it had been plied with bar soap and a lifetime of hard water. Which was, of course, enough for him to know where he was. Who he was.

Resigned, he opened his eyes to see the cracked ceiling of Adam’s apartment just as the alarm beside the bed went off. It was pre-dawn and already hot in the little room above St. Agnes. Ronan fumbled a bit trying to turn off the alarm, wide awake but fingers clumsy. It had been years since he’d woken to anything but Gansey’s movements or his gentle knock on Ronan’s door at Monmouth. Now, alarm shrill and insistent, head aching, hurting all over in a dull, unavoidable way, Ronan felt very alone.

He needed to figure out how this happened and fix it. He needed to find Gansey, who would surely know what to do. If the gritty feeling of tired eyes and sluggish stumble of his thoughts meant anything, he needed to go back to sleep. But really, he needed to go to Adam’s shift at the factory because if he didn’t Adam would lose his job and Ronan knew he couldn’t afford that.

So he dragged himself up, skin already prickling with how badly this could go.

Getting ready was fraught. Adam always had a shower in the evenings so at least his body was clean. But there was still the fact of peeing. (No morning wood, for which Ronan was immensely grateful.) He stood in the bathroom for a few moments, knowing he didn’t have time to waste if he wanted to get to the factory by 5:00. Finally he sat down on the toilet, looked straight ahead, and peed that way. It was the least invasive thing he could think to do.

Changing was easier. Ronan just kept the old underwear on; who cared they were teenage boys they did it all the time anyway. He felt shaky, hungry. But there was nothing in Adam’s mini-fridge other that a bottle of coke, so he drank that and hoped the sugar would keep him going until he could finish this shift and then… he would figure something out.

Driving to the factory was the easiest part yet. Ronan had been there often enough and driving always calmed him down. He realized after about thirty feet that Adam needed glasses. Not badly. But the trees were green blurs rather than collections of distinct leaves. He wondered if Adam knew. Gansey had told him once that he hadn’t even realized how the world was supposed to look until he'd put on his glasses for the first time.

He got to the factory with 3 minutes to spare, waited in line to clock in, carefully watching the movements of the people in front of him. Ronan was not Gansey; he didn’t generally care if he did things the right way or if he stood out or any of that. But now his heart beat not faster but harder, steady but insistent in his ears as he tried to notice everything that the other people did without even thinking about it.

Clocking in wasn’t too hard, in the end. The rest of the shift was harder.

He was working next to a guy whose name he didn’t know but who clearly knew Adam. He was doing the same job it seemed. So Ronan just followed the guy’s lead, only much slower and managing to almost cut off a finger on every third movement.

“I’m finally gonna get that production bonus today if you keep going like that, kid,” the guy said, not looking up. Ronan tensed up and almost destroyed one of the metal pieces he was supposed to be cutting. “Hey, watch it or you’ll get both of our pays docked instead. You okay?”

“Not feeling well,” Ronan said, and it sounded like Adam’s voice but it didn’t really _sound_ like Adam. “Sorry,” he tacked on.

“It’s fine kid, I don’t get any more sick days than you do. But this ain’t the kind of work you can do if your brain’s somewhere else.”

“I’ve got it,” Ronan said, clipped and even more obviously not like Adam. The anger felt different in his chest, he realized. Ronan’s anger felt like flash paper caught just under his skin; rub against him the wrong way and he’d suddenly ignite. Adam’s felt like he’d swallowed acid; poison trapped in his body, eating at his insides.

As he thought about that, he realized Adam’s body had fallen into a rhythm, muscle memory taking over and allowing him to fall into quick practiced movements.

“Well there goes my bonus,” the man said, not sounding upset about it.

There were a few more close calls with Adam’s hands and the heavy machinery but Ronan tried not to think about it. Not thinking was the key. Still, towards the end of the shift his stomach started to hurt, lack of breakfast catching up to him, and it became harder to tune everything out. Ronan wished he had his headphones and some music. God how did Adam do this job with just the clamor of metal and buzz of machinery in his ears for six, or sometimes ten hours in a row.

By the time he clocked out he was shaky with fatigue not to mention bored out of his mind. Yeah, he was sick of this shit. Not the body, but the treatment of the body by its usual owner.

He drove to Monmouth.

Gansey was up, still in the middle of rearranging his “library” — aka the many tottering piles of books, haphazard and just plain hazardous. When Ronan walked in Gansey looked up, smiled and said, “hey Champ,” like this was anywhere approaching a reasonable way for a seventeen year old to start a conversation.

“I’m not Adam.”

Gansey looked violently alarmed.

“I’m Ronan.” The way his name sounded with Adam’s unsuppressed accent, and from a slightly deeper register as it echoed around his skull, was so good it felt wrong. Ronan ignored it.

Gansey still looked alarmed but he was also starting to get that curious light in his eyes that signaled his interest was piqued.

“You’re Ronan? Did you- is this a dream th-“

“No. No, no.” Ronan said firmly. “I didn’t shapeshift or dream myself into this. At least I don’t think so. My bet is that Adam is in my room, in my body, sleeping his fucking heart out right now.”

Gansey’s whole face was luminous with curiosity.

“We sh-”

“Let him sleep, I just need my wallet. And some fucking food.”

He went into the kitchen/laundry room/bathroom and pulled out some leftover pizza from last night. They had four slices left, three of which were from Gansey’s avocado-ridden half. At this point Ronan really did not care so he ate all four.

Gansey watched him through the first (sausage) slice, then seemed convinced that barging in and eating their food was un-Adam-like enough to warrant accepting that something was definitely _up_. When Ronan came back out he was on the phone with Blue looking like he was worried but also a little giddy with the rush of unexpected magic.

Ronan went over to his bedroom door and swung it open decisively. It squeaked, as it always did, but it only would have squeaked more if he’d tried to ease it open. The lump under the covers didn’t even stir. Chainsaw did though. She stared at him with one dark eye, then cocked her head, looked at the bed where Ronan’s body slept soundly, looked back. Ronan stared her down and shrugged with one shoulder, daring her to make a ruckus. Maybe she knew, maybe she didn’t, but regardless, she ignored him and went back to quietly ripping up his summer homework. Ronan grabbed his wallet out of his pants from yesterday and left her to it.

When he re-emerged, Gansey was off the phone.

“What do you need Ro- your- what do you need money for?”

“You think I’m gonna starve just because I’m in Adam’s body? Jesus he only had a Coke in his apartment.”

Gansey looked pensive for a moment, then said, “Don’t you think people are going to say something if Adam appears to be running around town with your credit cards?”

Ronan paused and thought about this for a long two seconds.

“I’ll just get cash out of the ATM at the gas station. The shitbox is running on empty anyway.”

“He won’t like this,” Gansey pointed out.

“I don’t give a shit. Tell him I’m not living like he does for however long it takes to get things back to normal.”

* * *

Adam woke up slowly, leisurely at first, then grudgingly as reality set in and he realized he was eating into his studying time. Technically it was summer, he should be free to spend time with his friends and ignore all things Aglionby for now. But of course, there was summer homework for all his classes. And the SAT was around the corner. And he needed to be working on college apps. In honesty, those things could wait. But Adam was perpetually stressed and busy and that was the only way he survived. If he stopped long enough to appreciate the few good things (his friends, his deal with Cabeswater, all the little things he could label as ‘his’) then all the bad things would catch up with him too. So he didn’t lie there soaking in the feeling of his erection pressing against the mattress, or the way his body felt heavy with sleep but not pulled apart by overexertion. Instead he mentally started going over his schedule for the day. It was a… Tuesday? Wait, if it was Tuesday, he had a early shift at the factory. Had he gone and come back? He couldn’t remember. Maybe his alarm hadn’t gone off. Shit, he was screwed if that was the case.

He didn’t feel as worried as he usually would though. Instead he was tempted to just roll over and go back to bed. If he was late (which he had to be based on the level of tired he was, or rather, wasn’t) then he would have lost the job. Well, a voice whispered in the back of his head, if he’d lost the job there was nothing he could do about it now.

But most of him, his normal waking brain, was revving up, starting to spin. Carl at the factory still owed him for that shift Adam had taken on Christmas Eve. Could he call it the favor and get Carl to cover for him if Adam said his timecard hadn’t punched properly? It was worth a shot, Adam decided, sitting up with an odd sense of vertigo and prying his eyes open to see… Ronan’s room? Why was he in Ronan’s room? He didn’t fall asleep here.

Oh no. Oh no. Was this another fugue state? Adam swung his legs off the edge of the bed just as Chainsaw came to perch on his shoulder. Adam flinched instinctively. Chainsaw’s claws were sharp so they were all used to shooing her away before she could dig holes into their shirts and shoulders. But this time it only twinged slightly and Adam looked at himself.

There were huge holes in the fabric of his shirt and underneath thick calluses right where Chainsaw’s claws rested against his skin. His untanned, freckle-less skin pulled tight over his suddenly muscular shoulder.

It didn’t take a genius, not when you were as accustomed to absolutely ludicrous things happening as Adam was.

“Fuck.” It fell out of his mouth easily, as though it had been waiting on Ronan’s tongue for just such an opportunity.

He scrubbed his hands over his face as another urge to just go back to sleep came over him. He wasn’t tired. If anything, he felt more well-rested than he had in a long time. But still, the effort required to stand up seemed almost insurmountable. The fire in his chest -- the combustion engine he had instead of a heart, the drive that got him out of bed before dawn nearly every day, that kept him going on three hours of sleep, five or six if he was lucky, that kept him motivated because failure wasn’t an option -- just wasn’t there.

It was the strangeness of it, more than anything, that finally pushed Adam to his feet. Once started, movement wasn’t so difficult and Adam continued to the door and opened it.

Blue and Gansey looked up from where their heads had been bent over an old book. Their gazes were intent and perhaps a little guilty.

“Adam?” Gansey asked, hesitant.

“So it seems.” He walked over to them. “How the hell did this happen? And please tell me Ronan covered my shift this morning.”

“Umm, he didn’t mention it, but he came over around eleven and grabbed some food, so he could have come from the factory.”

“Where is he now? Wait, at eleven? _What time is it_? I’ve got to close at Boyd’s tonight. Fuck.”

“It’s okay, it’s only noon. Ronan’s… getting some stuff. But he’s probably back at St. Agnes by now.”

Adam mentally noted the pause, the use of the word “getting” which could mean collecting or purchasing, but he didn’t have time for this. He felt, not anxious precisely, but tense, tightly-wound, like a hissing fuse that he didn’t know the length of.

He went to get on shoes and find the keys to the BMW. When he reached the door, Blue piped up.

“Adam?’ He turned back. “We’ll fix this.”

He sighed, wondering if they’d manage to get things back to rights before or after everything went to shit. But he did appreciate the words, so he nodded in thanks before heading out the door.

* * *

 Ronan was kind of freaking out. According to the careful agenda written on a sheet of notebook paper on Adam’s desk, he had to be at the garage from 3:30 to 9:00. This was a problem for many reasons.

One, he was not a mechanic. He had picked up enough from Adam that he changed his own brake pads on the BMW, and he knew how to fix most of the common problems with the Pig. But that was pretty radically not the same as being Adam.

Two, he was exhausted. With the little boost of energy from the pizza he’d gone shopping using the cash he pulled out of his account but that wasn’t enough to keep him going for much longer. He could barely focus his eyes he was so tired, thoughts kept drifting away from him and his eyelids kept sliding shut. He still had an hour and a half before he had to be on the way to Boyd’s but he worried if he slept now he wouldn’t wake up for a long time. Theoretically Adam’s body was used to this. But Ronan sure as hell wasn’t. He could see himself turning off the alarm and rolling over to go back to sleep and then where would Adam be?

Three, he was sweaty, overheated, and beginning to give off a faint boyish smell that was distracting to experience this close. He probably needed to have a shower or at least wipe off his chest before going into the shop. But that was definitely not going to happen. Ronan didn’t trust himself.

So he was stuck in limbo. Trying to keep himself awake, trying not to think too much about where and who he was, but also trying not to think about the future and the likely disastrous shift at Boyd’s that was coming. It was a relief to hear a heavy knock, even as he was shocked out of a tiny nap he hadn’t been aware he was having. He got up from the desk and opened the door to see… himself.

It was deeply jarring, even if he had been expecting it. It was hard to tell if Adam was thinking the same thing; he knew what expressions felt like but seeing them from this side was very different.

“Can I come in?” Oh, Ronan knew that tone of voice though. Adam was worried and trying to cover it with annoyance (and not doing as good a job of it as Ronan would have).

Ronan stepped aside to let him in.

“I went to your shift this morning, it’s fine.”

“And this afternoon? What were you gonna do then, Ronan?” More annoyed now.

“I didn’t do this. Why the fuck are you pissed at me?”

“You should have woken me.”

“Why? I can handle it.”

“Oh yeah, mindless labor, anyone can do it. Hell, you’ll probably do my life better than I do.” The statement was so steeped in sarcasm that it left a bitter taste in the air.

Before Ronan could figure out how the fuck he was supposed to respond to that, Adam’s gaze drifted over Ronan’s shoulder.

“Ronan, what the fuck. I can’t afford that.”

Ronan looked over his shoulder to see what Adam was talking about and saw all the non-perishable food lined up on top of the mini-fridge.

“Yeah well I can and I’m not fucking starving myself just to keep up appearances or whatever.”

“It’s _my_ body.” Too loud to be a conversation now. Definitely an argument.

“But right now, I’m living in it.” Too sharp to be conciliatory.

“Not for long.”

“Fine, then run back to Gansey, read your books, maybe take it easy for once in your fucking life.” It didn’t come out quite right. There was a note of pleading that he hadn’t even known would be there until it hung in the air between them.

Adam, wearing Ronan’s face, looked furious. Jaw clenched. Eyes flat and icy blue. But for just a second it wavered, flickered into another expression.

And the next second he just looked tired. Ronan knew that feeling. The problem with flashpaper skin was that once it had burned up he was left raw, nothing but ashes.

“Go to Boyd’s. Look busy for a few hours until the other guys clear out. Then I’ll come by and get to work.”

Ronan wanted to protest. His own anger was banked but still smouldering and his pride wanted him to open his mouth and say ‘I can handle it’. But of course, he couldn’t. So he just jerked his chin down in a movement that could generously be called assent.

“I can’t believe you got name brand,” Adam scoffed, pushing past him to look more closely. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a brand loyal guy.”

Ronan didn’t say that he bought the most expensive form of everything, partially because he was used to it and partially so he could spoil Adam’s palette a little bit.

“I buy the best.”

“Yeah well.” He picked up a bottle of painkillers from the desk. “Advil and Ibuprofen are exactly the same. So congrats falling for that shit. Also…” He leaned in a little closer and Ronan froze. “You smell.”

“It’s not my b.o.. Ya know, ‘cause it’s not my body. Technically.” It was not as smooth as Ronan would have liked. He blamed the way he felt hyperaware that this was Adam leaning so close.

Adam rolled his eyes.

“Yeah well _my body_ needs something between a morning shift and an evening shift or you get this.” He gestured at the shirt Ronan was wearing which did, in this heat, have some damp spots. “We can’t all sweat rosewater and WD-40,” Adam continued.

“ _Rose what_?”

Adam snorted, which sounded much cuter when Adam did it even though technically it should have sounded the same. He maneuvered Ronan around and into the tiny bathroom. It felt strange to be the shorter one for once.

“Take off your shirt.”

Adam’s face was not as prone to blushing as Ronan’s was. So while Ronan felt light-headed and clumsy pulling the shirt over his head, the mirror just showed tanned and heavily freckled skin. Adam wasn’t paying attention anyway. He was too busy wetting a hand towel and working some bar soap into a lather with it.

When he turned back to Ronan there was a flash of something across his face but before Ronan could analyze it Adam brought the towel up and started scrubbing.

Instinctively Ronan shied away, but it seemed Adam’s chest was not as sensitive as Ronan’s because the abrasive slide of terry cloth over skin didn’t hurt.

Adam moved efficiently and Ronan raised his arms, trying to ignore the excruciating intimacy of being this close, of feeling Adam’s skin as his own, of knowing it was Adam’s businesslike movements making him clean. A second baptism, Ronan thought, swallowing.

And then, already, Adam was turning around and rinsing out the cloth. Another round of brisk swipes of the towel and Ronan was busy ignoring the way water was dripping down his stomach and soaking into the waistband of the pants he was wearing.

“What’re we going to do? Until we fix this, I mean?” Ronan finally forced out.

Adam’s movements slowed as he stared holes into the chest beneath his hand.

“I guess we just… treat it like normal.”

“What like-”

“Don’t jerk off,” Adam said suddenly and Ronan barely stopped himself from sucking in a too-quick breath. He froze instead. “But otherwise,” Adam shrugged. “I don’t see what else we could do.”

“Right.” Ronan had never heard Adam’s voice sound like it did now. It was rough and caught coming out of his throat.

“Great.” Adam turned suddenly, dropped the towel in the sink and walked back into the other room. Ronan took a few steadying breaths then followed.

Adam was digging around in a milk crate which, along with its fellows, made up Adam’s ‘dresser’.

“Here,” he said, throwing a grey tank top in Ronan’s direction. “You can get away with just an undershirt at Boyd’s because everyone knows working in the shop is hell on clothes.”

“Got it.” Ronan pulled the shirt on.

Adam turned around and looked him up and down quickly. Ronan wondered what he saw. Was Ronan wearing Adam’s body like an ill-fitting suit? Or did it look strange and impossible and good on him the way Ronan’s body looked on Adam? Before Ronan could formulate something actually _reasonable_ to say, Adam was nodding, satisfied.

“See you at six then.” And then he turned and left.

It was a relief and a disappointment as the tension drained out of Ronan. Jesus, this was going to be rough.

* * *

Adam pulled the BMW into the little dead end that forked off from the road leading to Boyd’s. Then he waited, watching in the rearview as one by one the other guys’ cars left the way they’d come. Ronan was either being a special level of asshole or he managed to convince the guys somehow that he had it handled because Boyd’s truck came down the road at five-thirty, the last one to leave.

Adam parked behind the Hondoyota and went in the back way. Ronan was lounging on a stool, somehow making Adam’s body, which had known it’s way around a mechanic’s shop before it had known a classroom, seem too regal for the surroundings. Adam hated the reminder that it wasn’t his past that made it so he fit with the dirty, broken things; it was just _him_.

“How did you manage to get dirty while doing nothing?” Adam asked, nodding at the grease stains up his arms and on his undershirt.

“I’ll have you know I changed the oil on all these babies,” Ronan said, nodding at the three cars waiting for repairs.

“That’s great,” Adam said dryly, looking at the clipboard with the work orders, “but according to this none of them actually needed their oil changed.”

Ronan didn’t say anything and his expression looked a bit like he was constipated. Jesus, did Adam’s face always look that stupid?

“It’s fine. Just leave a note for the owners saying that you gave them a complimentary oil change. Boyd won’t be thrilled but we do it occasionally.” Not usually on three cars in one night, Adam didn’t add.

Two of the cars were easy fixes. They’d already run the diagnostics and ordered the parts so Adam just had to install them.

The third one was a goddamn lemon. Shirley-Mae had bought it secondhand when Ralph left and someone had taken advantage of the situation. A few more parts and she’ll have spent more money fixing it that it ever cost. But she couldn’t afford a new one so Adam did his best to figure out not just what was wrong this time, but what was the next piece that was gonna breakdown.

He didn’t realize he was muttering to himself until he sat up to reach for a ratchet and Ronan handed him the one he needed.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Is that the right thing?” Ronan had a fragile expression on his face that Adam knew well from the other side. He made that face when he was fighting against a feeling of helplessness.

“Yeah, it is.”

After that Adam tried to keep up a little bit of chatter. Asking for tools, explaining what he was doing even if Ronan couldn’t see and probably didn’t understand what he was saying. He wasn’t used to talking and working at the same time so he would lapse into silence while he concentrated. A few times hearing his own voice coming from a few feet away shocked him and once he almost dropped a socket wrench on his face in surprise when Ronan asked a question.

God, he thought, only them. Only he and his friends would have this kind of mixed up magic nonsense happen to them.

Eventually Ronan stopped responding and Adam checked on him to find he’d fallen asleep with his back to the Chevy Adam had fixed first. Yeah, Adam thought, that checked out. He always felt like a nap during these evening shifts too.

It was only 8:30 when Adam decided he’d done all he really could on Shirley-Mae’s piece of junk. So he had time to clean up around the place, get everything back in order and then wake Ronan up and dictate a few notes for him to write. They looked a little wrong, as though they had been written by someone unfamiliar with how hands worked, but certainly better than Adam could have done.

“Tomorrow’s just a double shift at the warehouse. Lenny likes us to be at the loading dock fifteen minutes early, so don’t sleep in. Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah, I think I got it.”

“And I’ll spend the day figuring out how the hell to get us back. Oh and,” Adam said, as they were almost at their respective cars. “Do you have my wallet with you?”

Ronan nodded and tossed it over.

Feeling exposed Adam took out the few bills and the change he had from the wallet.

“Need to go get dinner,” he explained, somewhat defensively. “And it’s been established that we’re using our own money for things.”

Ronan gritted his teeth in a very _Ronan_ expression.

“I’ve got protein powder, have that for breakfast.”

“Uh, n-”

“Look I don’t want to get back in my body and find it all spindly.”

That was bullshit. Ronan was more obviously muscular but they could probably bench the same amount, if Adam cared about that kind of thing.

But it had been a long, strange day and Adam was so tired of fighting with Ronan, so he just shrugged in evasive semi-acquiescence.

Then Ronan drove away, in the wrong car, to the wrong place, with the wrong body.

Adam stopped at a gas station and bought two discounted corn dogs before heading to Monmouth. He didn’t like that he was staying here. But he understood that it would be a little odd if the nuns at St. Agnes suddenly saw Ronan move into Adam’s apartment.

He stripped and got into the shower without really thinking deeply about it, tired and longing for the sweet embrace of a mattress.

But once he was there it hit him.

This was what Ronan looked like… naked.

Adam was suddenly intensely uncomfortable. But also he couldn’t help but be curious. He’d never seen anyone else naked before. Not really. He stared at Ronan’s hands, wrists, the scarred skin of his inner arms. He touched the dusky skin of Ronan’s nipples, already pebbled in the lukewarm water, and gasped. They were so sensitive. Cautiously he rubbed the pads of his fingers around them. Then he realized he was getting hard and he snatched his hands away guiltily.

It reminded him of something though. Earlier, when they’d both been at St. Agnes and Adam had been cleaning Ronan off… that first second when he’d seen Ronan’s bare chest (which was _his_ bare chest, that he saw _every day_ ) he’d felt a helpless surge of something in his gut. It was different than he usually felt when he looked at Ronan. It was it was more similar to the way he felt looking at Ronan’s body now, like there was something he wanted but he was scared down to his bones to take it.

Adam turned the shower a little colder, blaming the mugginess of the day and the lack of ventilation in this room, before quickly cleaning off and getting ready for bed.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow they would sort this out.


	2. you're the best thing I've seen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait between chapters! Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about this fic!! Also thank you to @alchemicalwords and @thanatosdreaming on Tumblr for helping me get this chapter in working order <333

Ronan had always appreciated Gansey’s doggedness. Gansey  _ plus  _ Adam was a force to be reckoned with. So when three days had passed of consulting with the psychics and all Gansey’s books and Mallory and maybe, desperately, Google, Ronan was no longer feeling hopeful. This would not be a quick fix, as Adam had implied.

Ronan didn’t actually spend much time following their research process, mostly because he didn’t have much time that wasn’t already accounted for. It was summer, which usually meant Adam was spending more time with the rest of them, but Ronan was not as accustomed to the brutal schedule and instead spent most of his free time sleeping or lying on the mattress above St. Agnes, exhausted to the point of crying but too hot and too lonely and too miserable to sleep. He didn’t know what it was. Was it him? Did he bring the sadness with him like a shadow? Or did Adam always feel like this? Was it Ronan’s tired mind turning the stuffy apartment into a thorny, claustrophobic prison, or had the misery seeped into the floorboards long before Ronan had noticed it?

He blamed this entire stupid situation for how long it took him to realize the flickers in the darkness and the wraiths on the edge of his fuzzy vision were a result of supernatural intervention rather than the deterioration of his mental state.

By the time he realized, he couldn’t bring it up to Adam because it would be frankly embarrassing not to have noticed earlier. Besides, he knew how Adam dealt with this. So Ronan hunted around for the tarot cards and tried turning some over at random. Nothing happened. No grand revelations or deep magical communications came through.

He forced himself to focus, to think about what it was like to pull something out of his dream. It just wasn’t the same, being awake. Adam was the magician; Ronan was only special when he was asleep. 

So instead he tried to lose focus, sink into his mind the way he did at the factory, let Cabeswater or muscle memory or anything else that happened to live in that little church-adjacent room take over.

He felt himself relax, let it happen, until the hand holding the deck felt ready for something. Then, anticlimactically, the cards slipped from his fingers and tumbled off his lap and onto the floor. These were Adam’s hands, Adam’s eyes, but Ronan didn’t know how to do Cabeswater’s work with them.

“Fuck,” he said, with feeling. Looking down though, four cards drew his eye in the mess. Ronan wasn’t even sure why he focused on those four. They just seemed to stand out a little in the jumble of images.

The Magician. Well that was obvious. Adam. Next to it: The Knight of Cups, reversed. Ronan didn’t know who that was supposed to be, or if it even was a person. Above those two: The Devil, reversed. He assumed a card called “The Devil” was a bad thing, but maybe the fact that it was upside down was a good sign? Below the other three: The Lovers. Great, what the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was Cabeswater trying to play matchmaker? The idea was ridiculous, but not any more or less ridiculous than anything else that was happening right now.

“Hey Cabeswater,” he said out loud, tired and pissed off and done with this shit, “if you think my or Adam’s love life is any of your business, you can go fuck yourself.”

He stepped over the whole mess and went over to the bed. He sat on the mattress with his head in his hands for a while. Because this seemed to back up a fear that Ronan had had from the beginning. 

Maybe...fuck. Maybe he’d done this. If not directly, then indirectly. Cabeswater and the ley line and the world itself upending basic laws of nature to give Ronan what he wanted. It wouldn’t be the first time. And even if he’d never dreamed himself into a situation like this, it was still possible that he was responsible.

Ronan felt like such a piece of shit. Here he was, wanting to touch Adam so much it hurt, and then waking up and  _ having  _ to touch his body every damn day. What a strange and gross coincidence.

After wallowing for a little, Ronan sighed, took a deep breath, and decided something.

Because if he’d done this, the least he could do was leave Adam’s life better than he’d found it.

So he stepped over the cards, more carefully this time, and grabbed his wallet. He had some things that needed doing.

* * *

The person in front of Adam looked like a funhouse mirror version of Ronan. The same beautiful bone structure and coiled danger in a lazy sprawl of legs. But where Ronan looked hazardous in the abstract -- like a shark swimming past the glass at the D.C. aquarium that Adam had visited at seven years old -- this man looked immediately and imminently dangerous -- like the first time Adam had found his father waiting for him when he got home with a gun on the table beside the beer bottles. Even as he thought of these things, he saw them, like afterimages lighting up behind Adam’s eyelids as the man watched him. Adam thought somehow that this funhouse mirror man could see straight into his thoughts and it frightened him.

Then the man flickered, gone for a second and then back in the exact same spot but with a bit of blood trickling down from his hairline into his eyes.

Then Adam woke up.

He felt a pressure on his chest, too heavy to be Chainsaw, more like a cinder block digging into his sternum. But when he opened his eyes there was nothing there. There was a terrifying second where he tried to lift up his arms but they didn’t move. Then the moment passed and he pressed a hand to his chest. There was nothing there.

Just a feeling like he couldn’t draw a deep breath, like he was missing something, a lung or a rib, a ventricle.

Carefully, he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. It didn’t get easier. Did Ronan have some kind of medical condition he’d been hiding? Adam forced Ronan’s body, sluggish with sleep and this new thing, into the main room of Monmouth. Gansey looked up from his model Henrietta, face soft before it turned confused.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I feel weird.”

Gansey considered him for a moment, then patted the cold floor next to him.

“Come sit.”

Adam went over, folded himself as small as he could get in this larger body.

Neither of them said anything. Gansey went back to gluing together tiny gas pumps and Adam just sat, thinking and feeling the pain in his chest.

The thing was, Adam knew pain. A week of Ronan’s soft schedule wouldn’t change the way Adam was born and made. Pain was Adam’s oldest and closest companion.

So why was this hard?

The first time he’d worked a double shift at the factory after pulling an all-nighter he’d almost given himself third degree burns on the high temperature stamping equipment. He’d gotten away with a big red welt across his forearm that had ached up until it scarred. But he’d still worked the rest of the shift. Now he found himself scratching at his forearm. No burn but not unblemished either; crisscrossing, puckered skin that told a different kind of story.

“What time is it?” Adam asked, not wanting to think anymore.

“Three a.m.,” Gansey said, without looking at his watch. A pause as he held the cardboard canopy in place over the gas pumps. “Ronan always has nightmares at three a.m..”

“I’m not Ronan,” Adam said, but he was thinking. It had been an odd kind of nightmare. If anything, there had been a warm feeling in the dream when he’d first seen the man. But the pressure was similar to anxiety and the pain similar to fear, he supposed. “Do you know what he dreams about?”

Gansey looked at him, chewed on the mint leaf in his mouth, or possibly on the inside of his lip. “You should ask him.”

“He won’t tell me,” Adam said dismissively.

“How do you know?”

This seemed like a stupid question. Ronan was a man of actions not words and although he didn’t lie he also didn’t often give a straight answer to a personal question unless it suited him. Adam gave Gansey a look that he hoped conveyed this.

Gansey returned the look blandly. “I think,” Gansey said, picking up the next piece of cardboard, “you’d be surprised what Ronan would be willing to talk to you about.”

There was no particular emphasis on the second “you” in the sentence but nonetheless it weighed on Adam, or rather the implication. He knew that Ronan had a crush on him. It had been a whole awkward, flattering, difficult knot in his chest more or less since the rent incident. He still didn’t know what to do about it, how to address the vulnerable but excited feeling of being wanted and possibly wanting in return. He’d held Ronan’s secret like a cupped candle to his chest, always risking it flickering out or burning him or both.

But now Gansey knew the secret, or at least that was what he’d just implied. Was he right? Would Ronan answer Adam’s questions, talk to him, do something for him, just because he asked? It gave Adam an uncomfortable skittish hope-fear in his stomach. There was a guilty part of him that wanted that kind of power, the internalized knowledge that he had something someone wanted, that for even one person he was as important as Gansey was to just about everyone he met. 

But a larger part of him thought this was  _ Ronan _ . Ronan was his friend and he did nothing by half-measures and the idea that he would do or say something just because Adam wanted him to made Adam feel dirty and monstrous, sick and sickened.

Feeling his gut clench unpleasantly made him realize that the pain in his chest had, at least for now, subsided. He relaxed into his borrowed body and thought about going back to bed. 

There was something peaceful about Monmouth at night. He’d noticed it before but never like it was now. Monmouth at night was dangerously hospitable, like he could live his whole life here and time outside would pause itself and wait for him.

Gansey, it seemed, would wait for him too. When Adam looked over Gansey was watching him, again or still.

“You know you’d be surprised at the things that come to you if you just ask for them.”

He realized that they were still talking about Ronan and he grimaced.

“Maybe for you, Gansey. It’s not that easy for the rest of us.”

Gansey looked taken aback and then thoughtful. 

“But I don’t ask for things,” Gansey said and Adam scoffed bitterly. Because having things presented to you without being asked was so different.

“I’m going to bed,” he said, and got up. He wasn’t sure if he could sleep, but he was willing to try.

Gansey let him go.

* * *

Ronan’s last stop was the optometrist. After the eye exam he tried on half a dozen frames, but he honestly didn’t even know what he was looking for. He was tempted to buy the clearly Harry Potter inspired round gold frames, just to be an asshole. But in the end he chose a thick-rimmed, dark brown pair because they were expensive and the annoyingly helpful sales assistant had suggested they would nicely complement Adam’s tanned and freckled face. It had nothing at all to do with the way he found himself pausing, struck by Adam’s eyes staring back at him in the mirror: bloodshot and accompanied by dark circles, but so damn blue Ronan felt overwhelmed for a fraction of a second. Then he looked away, angry at himself and Adam and the sales girl who was looking at him oddly now. She couldn’t be more than a few years older than them. Ronan wondered if she and Adam had ever gone to the same school, before he’d transferred to Aglionby.

“These,” he said, maybe too harshly. She threw on a fake-bright smile and went to ring him up. When he handed over his creditcard --  _ his _ , Ronan N Lynch embossed in the dark blue plastic -- she did a tiny double take. He’d known it was a risk but Ronan had found there was such a thing as a daily limit on cash withdrawals from ATMs. 

“How’s your dad doing, Adam?” she asked, casually. Shit.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Still an asshole,” Ronan said with a sharp grin.

She swallowed and ran his card, clearly not sure what to do with that response. But before she handed it back she glanced up at him.

“I- I didn’t mean anything by it. Really. It’s- I’m jealous,” she said, with a secretive smile.

“Of what?” Ronan asked carefully, for once actually sounding like Adam.

“Everyone wants a rich boyfriend to pay the bills,” she said with a laugh.

Ronan’s brain shut down for a crucial second when he should have been coming up with a believable alternate excuse. Instead she looked up and smiled again and handed his card back and Ronan took it automatically.

“You can pick up the glasses in a couple of days. You have a good day now,” she said, southern drawl coming out in full force.

Ronan nodded jerkily and beat it back to the Hondoyota. Even as he started up the car, it began to dawn on him how completely he’d fucked up.

He didn’t slam on the horn in frustration, only because he could still see the assistant looking at him through the front windows. Instead he just clenched the steering wheel so tight Adam’s fingers turned white as he drove out of sight.

“Fuck. Fuck.  _ Fuck _ !” he yelled. If he’d been in his own body he would be punching something right now, but the last thing Adam needed was a broken knuckle or some such shit which, with his luck today, would be practically inevitable. So instead he just seethed with anger and sublimated worry as he drove, as he transferred all his purchases up to the apartment and as he got ready for his evening shift loading boxes. If hours of physical labor were good for anything they better damn well help with this, Ronan thought bitterly, and got ready to leave.

* * *

Adam wasn’t used to checking a phone, so it was fairly easy to continue not-checking Ronan’s. But when the ringing woke him up it was instinctual to answer.

“Yeah?” Perhaps a rude way to answer the phone, but he was tired and besides rudeness just added to the verisimilitude.

“Ronan, it’s Sunday. Where the hell are you?” Declan sounded pissed.

“ _ Shit _ ,” Adam said, the vehemence all his own. Seriously? He had next to no responsibilities now and he still forgot the one place he actually needed to be? “I’ll be right there.”

Declan grunted and hung up. Adam stumbled through getting dressed in the only unwrinkled clothes in Ronan’s entire closet and then pushed the BMW faster than he normally would, until his pulse rushed happily in his ears and he, without thinking, slid into the St. Agnes lot, kicking up dust and involuntarily grinning.

Then he caught sight of Declan, standing just outside the main doors and looking furious. Adam tried to push the smile off his face, but it stubbornly clung in the corners of his mouth as he forced himself out of the car and approached the church.

Declan didn’t let him say anything, just turned away when Adam was near and slipped into the proceedings a few feet ahead of him.

Adam had lived above the church for over six months but he’d never been to mass. Stepping into the middle of one with the judging glances of Henrietta’s Catholic contingent weighing on him was definitely not his preferred first experience. His pulse was steady, in time with the murmurings of the priest, but underneath Adam felt an existential panic. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He didn’t know how to do this. He was going to fuck something up.

It reminded him so strongly of his first few months at Aglionby that he shook his head, bitterly amused. Adam was no more at home in his own life than he was in Ronan’s. Regardless, it meant he had practice observing and carefully following the lead of the people around him. He made his way carefully through the required motions, until it was time to take communion.

Adam knew enough to know that he shouldn’t take it. But he also didn’t want to make things difficult for Ronan. His mind raced, trying to find a way out, as Matthew took communion and Declan crowded up behind him. Adam stepped forward, bowed and took the wafer in his hand. He pretended to put it in his mouth as he walked over the the priest with the wine. Instead he slipped it in his pocket, sure that this was wrong but hoping somehow it was less wrong than the alternatives. He couldn’t get out of the sip of wine, the way it’s watery bitterness hit his tongue and bloomed. The guilt felt bone-deep, more than logic could explain.

Afterwards, he drifted out of the church with Declan and Matthew, the latter of whom was keeping the awkward silence at bay.

“You took communion,” Declan said, as the other church-goers dispersed. He didn’t look angry, but Adam tensed.

“Should I not have?” Nerves made his voice appropriately sharp.

“No, it’s fine. It’s good.”

Matthew threw an arm around his shoulders and Adam knew he was missing something important. He just nodded jerkily, hoping the conversation would move on or he could escape back to Monmouth.

“Getting into trouble now that school’s out?” Declan asked. And Adam knew, if Ronan had been there, he would have bristled, would have taken it as an insult. But Adam had heard barbs intended to cut his whole life, and this wasn’t that. Declan’s eyes were wary rather than aggressive, his mouth twisted unhappily.

Without really thinking about it, Adam replied with a bland: “Not really.”

Matthew smiled brightly at this and Declan’s gaze sharpened even as his shoulders relaxed.

“The anniversary is coming up,” Matthew said, “we should go visit Mom.”

Adam could guess which anniversary that was referring to, and made a mental note to check when it was with Ronan.

“What do you think, Ronan?” Declan’s face was closed off but his voice wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Adam said, “that’d be nice.”

The harsh expression sloughed off Declan’s face and underneath was something careworn.

“Will I have to go through your  _ secretary  _ in order to set it up? Or will you actually answer your phone?”

The idea of Gansey as Ronan’s secretary always amused Adam. He tried not to smile too wide and shrugged one shoulder. “No promises.” There, that was appropriately non-committal but also non-aggressive. Adam wasn’t one to make promises he didn’t know if he could keep. 

Matthew laughed and Declan even looked like he was thinking about smiling.

“I should go see Adam.” His own name felt strange coming out of the wrong mouth.

Declan nodded and Matthew gave him a sideways hug before letting go, but neither of them made a move to leave. Adam didn’t know if they would wait for him, if that was something they did.

He turned and let Ronan’s longer gait carry him over the lot and up the stairs. He knocked, then waited a few seconds and knocked again, twice as hard.

Just as he was raising his fist to try a third time, the door was wrenched open and his own face glared out at him.

“Fucking- what?” Ronan snapped. His hair was a disaster and he had pillow creases on his face and Adam felt strange affection tugging at his insides even as his brain found the picture wanting.

“Can I come in?”

Ronan grunted and moved aside.

Adam realized, as his eyes re-adjusted to the darkness, that the inside of the apartment looked different.

For one thing there was a window unit pumping cool air into the little room. For another there was a small set of shelves where his milk crate bedside table had been. On it was: a toaster oven, a hot plate, and stacks of clothes that Adam had definitely not owned before.

“What the hell is this?” Adam asked levelly, trying to find calm in a body conditioned for rage.

Ronan looked around, as though somehow he’d forgotten.

“I got tired of living like I can’t just buy shit if I want it.”

“Great, so I suppose you’re going to take all this stuff with you once you’re back at Monmouth?”

Ronan frowned for a second and then just looked bored.

“The clothes wouldn’t fit my body anyway. And we’ve already got this stuff at Monmouth.”

Adam felt for a moment like he was losing the battle with his temper. He knew what Ronan was doing. He wasn’t being particularly fucking subtle. Giving gifts to Adam’s body, Adam’s life, that would last after they’d switched back.

“I don’t want your goddamn money, Ronan.”

“Fine,” Ronan said, only a little sharply, “then you can throw all this shit out once you’re back in your body. I don’t fucking care.”

For a second Adam was tempted, but he hated waste more than he hated charity. “You know I won’t do that. Jesus, why are you such an asshole all the time?”

Ronan just sneered, an expression that looked somehow worse on Adam’s face.

“Fuck you too,” Adam said. “Also, talk to your goddamn brother.”

“What does that mean?” Ronan asked, voice rising.

“It means I didn’t jump down his throat at everything he said and now you’ve got plans to go see your mom on the anniversary of your dad’s-”

“Fuck you, you don’t have the right-”

“Like  _ you  _ don’t have the right to-”

“It’s not the same and you know it! I’m trying to-”

“Fix it? Fix my life? Without my permission? Well it’s bullshit and guess what? Two can play at that game, asshole.”

It only dawned on Adam as he was stomping down the steps and Ronan was slamming the door behind him that he was scared.

He wasn’t scared of Ronan’s temper, never had been. But he was scared of his own face twisted with rage, of how familiar it looked and of how his own knuckles looked so sharp and deadly when they were part of a fist.

He was also suddenly aware and afraid of the possible consequences of having a yelling match in his apartment  _ above a church _ less than half an hour after Sunday mass. He heard a noise from behind him, more thump than crash, and he could guess that Ronan has thrown something. It bothered him that he didn’t know if that was more a result of Ronan’s frustration or his own body’s impulses.

Most people still milling around were carefully not looking at him or the other Lynch boys waiting for him by Declan’s car. As Adam got closer he caught Declan’s icy disdain and Matthew’s dismay straight to the chest like a blow.

“You yelled at Adam,” Matthew stage-whispered as soon as he was close enough. He looked genuinely upset and Adam didn’t know how to react to that. Not as himself and certainly not as Ronan. So he just shrugged noncommittally. Matthew looked disappointed in him and Adam’s chest ached with phantom regret tempered by leftover scraps of righteous anger.

“Maybe it would be best if we arrange our visit another time.” Declan’s voice was carefully measured to sting like a slap.

As the last of the adrenaline seeped out of Adam he just felt so tired. 

“Yeah, whatever.”

He walked over to the BMW and drove back to Monmouth.

Gansey was, finally, sleeping so Adam walked carefully to Ronan’s room. 

He hadn’t had breakfast and was thinking of the rice and chicken he’d made yesterday -- bland but palatable. The kind of dish that was much easier to make at Monmouth and would suddenly be possible at St. Agnes with Ronan’s new purchases. Adam hated that thought, wanted to unthink it or possibly yell some more. But he was spent, insides clogged with the ashes of his rage. Nothing left to burn.

Just as he walked back out into the main room, determined to eat something, Ronan’s phone started to ring. Gansey stirred uneasily and Adam quickly picked up the phone as he closed the door to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry room.

There was nothing on the other end for a long moment and Adam pulled the phone away to glance at the number. It was a Henrietta number, based on the area code, or at least somewhere close by.

“Hello?” he said, finally, more confused than brusque.

“Hey.” It sounded too familiar and completely strange. Ronan.

“What phone are you using?”

“I bought one.”

Adam waited for the anger to well up as it usually did for him. But the chemistry in his brain couldn’t light the fire in his chest right now. So he just sighed.

“Of course you did.”

“I’ve- we-” He still sounded angry and Adam wasn’t surprised when the next words out of his mouth were not an apology. “Boyd called to say he needs someone to close tonight.”

The last thing Adam wanted to do was sit around in the garage for hours tonight with Ronan, but it didn’t really matter. Adam was used to doing things he didn’t want to do.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there at 6:30.”

Ronan grunted -- an ugly sound Adam would have been too self-conscious to make -- and hung up.

* * *

Adam didn’t notice Boyd’s truck was still pulled up beside the garage until it was too late. Boyd had spotted him and was now paused watching the BMW slow to a stop.

“Lynch,” he said, when Adam rolled the window down.

Adam nodded, not sure how else to respond without giving himself away.

“You here for-” Boyd motioned behind him to the garage where presumably Ronan was ineptly trying to fix cars.

“Yes, S-” Adam bit back the ‘sir’ that wanted to jump out at the assessing look on Boyd’s face. At the last second he turned it into what hopefully sounded like a sarcastic elongation of the first word.

“I don’t know you too good. But Adam’s been acting strange recently. If that’s got something to do with you… well let’s just say I hope it doesn’t.”

Adam had no idea how to respond to that. Ronan would probably sneer or say something rude but Adam couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said finally, trying for belligerent but coming out cautious.

Boyd gave him an unimpressed, calculating look then shook his head, and walked over to his truck. Adam didn’t get out until the other car pulled away.

When he could no longer see the truck, he went inside.

“Hmm, pretty sure this is going to end in disaster,” Adam said. He was mostly talking about the whole “pretending to be someone else, and not doing a very good job of it” situation. He was also talking about Ronan standing under a lifted car gamely applying a socket wrench to the undercarriage. 

Ronan jumped, swore, narrowly missed dropping the wrench on his own face, and then shot Adam a truly impressive glare.

“Well I was right,” Adam pointed out, enjoying -- in a very Ronan way -- the needling.

Ronan was not, apparently, enjoying it. He picked up the wrench and then proceeded to glower at the car’s inner workings like that would somehow fix them. It wasn’t quite the expression Adam would have worn, but he could interpret it nonetheless. Ronan was still angry. Adam’s body was not as mercurial in its moods as Ronan’s was. When Adam forgave someone it was always a conscious effort to go against his worse, grudge-holding nature. Ronan, it seemed, wasn’t used to the body keeping score. 

“Boyd’s noticed something.”

“Huh, wonder if Declan noticed something?” Ronan asked snottily. “Me ‘not jumping down his throat’ all the time would be a pretty big change.”

Adam bit back a retort.

“This isn’t going to be as quick a fix as I thought,” he said instead.

“Yeah, I noticed.” More than angry he just sounded… tired. Adam could understand that.

“Do you want to actually... learn?”

Ronan shot him a confused look. Adam gestured at the car above their heads, then broader, at the whole garage.

“It’s fine if you just want to nap while I fix them. But it might be easier if you-“ Ronan was looking at him intently. “Nevermind, forget it.”

“What if we’re stuck like this?” Ronan asked, for once letting fear slip into his voice. “Like, for-“

“We won’t be,” Adam interrupted, sounding sure even if he didn’t feel it. Because they couldn’t be. It wasn’t an option. “The Greywaren and Cabeswater’s vessel? We can do fucking anything.”

Ronan scrubbed his free hand over his face, and it was a movement Adam had made himself so many times that it made something jolt in Adam’s brain.

What if this -- being in each other’s bodies -- was blurring the lines between them? Almost as scary as not going back to normal was the idea of going back but being… different. A little bit less himself. Ronan carrying a piece of Adam after this was done. Adam’s thoughts stuttered and his heart stumbled, in unison for just a moment.

“Yeah,” Ronan said, sounding resigned and relieved all at once. “Teach me this car shit.”

Adam pushed everything away. Focus. One thing at a time. One day, one shift, one hour at a time until something changed or until he died; that was Adam’s way.

“Okay, well first of all, you’re looking at completely the wrong part of the car.”

“Shit,” Ronan said, mostly to himself. And the anger from earlier at least seemed to have been put aside, for which Adam was grateful.

“While we’ve got it elevated we might as well check the exhaust system though. Usually when the muffler goes the exhaust pipe’s already cracked.”

There was something gratifying about Ronan’s attention as Adam talked him through the simpler fixes. About halfway through the first car he realized that this was probably not the best method and instead stepped back and took up handing over tools and directing Ronan. Ronan’s face fell into a concentrated frown and his movements were slow with poorly feigned confidence. Adam had to lean over his shoulder and correct him several times and the feeling of his own familiar back, his old grease stained hands, his awkward jutting wrists, set something in Adam on edge.

He told himself it was the strangeness of being near his body but not in it. Was that what he looked like? Was that how his chest seized when he was so focused he forgot to breathe? This entire week had been an exercise is physical and mental dissociation.

But he wondered if that was all it was. Maybe another part of it was just the difficult joy of being close to someone, the proximity to another body even if technically that body was his own. When their hands brushed it sent a warm shiver down Adam’s spine that had nothing to do with magic forests and everything to do with plainer types of alchemy.

He could admit, to himself, that Ronan too played a part. Ronan’s body reacting as it pleased, pulling Adam along for the ride. But also, Adam’s mind alighting on the display of diligence, the knowledge that that was  _ Ronan _ . Ronan’s smirk, Ronan’s muffled but beautiful cursing, Ronan’s increasingly deserved confidence. It was… in a word, an overload.

By the time they finished the first car, Adam needed a break. Adam took the excuse of looking at the quote for the next car in order to put a little distance between them. But he kept feeling Ronan’s gaze on him, a flickering awareness as Ronan’s usual feigned indifference fought with Adam’s obsessive tendencies. It made Adam feel aware of himself, of how he’d forgotten to change out of Ronan’s nice pants and how it wouldn’t matter because Ronan had a million pairs but that he  _ shouldn’t  _ have forgotten, just like he shouldn’t have forgotten about mass this morning. The guilt sat in his gut and made his hands feel sweaty and grimy and he couldn’t even wipe his hands on his pants because he’d fucking  _ forgotten to change _ .

The unpleasant feeling grew every time he felt Ronan’s eyes on him. His skin itched with how much he did not deserve to be regarded however Ronan was regarding him.

He got up. Washed his hands in the sink in the bathroom until Ronan’s normally smooth skin felt raw. That helped a little. Hands dry and clean, pants still pristine, but uncomfortable underneath it all, he stuffed his fists in his pockets as he walked back into the main garage. His knuckle brushed against something in his pocket and he remembered that it was the communion wafer with a sick rush of shame.

“Hey, this is yours,” he said, as Ronan looked up from his slouch against the next car.

The wafer was extended between them for a long moment and Ronan’s thoughts twisted behind Adam’s face, into an expression he’d never seen before.

“You took it?” Ronan asked finally, voice empty.

“Sorry, I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it would be worse if I ate it.” He hoped Ronan wouldn’t ask about the wine.

“Not everyone takes communion. I don’t, usually.”

“Oh.” Adam wavered. Ronan didn’t sound angry. But clearly Adam had done something wrong. “Sorry,” he said again. Then, hesitant, “Should I throw it out?”

“No, no,” Ronan said quickly. A single tense second and then he opened his mouth and closed his eyes and Adam knew suddenly what he was meant to do.

A hot wave flowed over him. Embarrassment or shame or something less explainable. Hesitantly he reached forward with the hand holding the wafer. Just as it touched Ronan’s tongue he paused and neither of them breathed.

And then he released, drew back into himself, broke the still air that had gathered around them. The tension shook through him and he closed his eyes for a second, trying to pull his shit together.

When he opened his eyes, Ronan was brushing past him, grabbing the clipboard on the table and looking at it intently. It was, of course, exactly the same move Adam had used a minute before. So Adam let him go, popped the hood of the next car.

“You don’t act like me,” Ronan said, still keeping his distance and voice guarded.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t really act like me either.”

“I don’t know how,” he said, like opening his mouth for the wafer -- baring a soft spot almost belligerently.

It seemed strange to Adam. He knew Ronan looked at him, studied him more intently than any subject at Aglionby, so it was odd that Ronan couldn’t mimic him.

But he supposed for how well he knew Ronan, Adam hadn’t been very good at pretending to be him either.

At the mercy of a set of split-second connections, Adam found himself asking: “What’s the date of your dad’s- you know,” he paused, regretting opening his mouth, “death?”

“August third,” Ronan said, and Adam couldn’t decode his tone, too distracted by the suddenly blooming pain in his chest. It felt the way a chest wound looked in the movies, blood seeping, spreading, shocking and red.

Adam put a hand up to his chest without permission from his brain.

“Do you _ - _ ” Adam wanted to ask if he had a heart condition, but that was all he managed to get out, voice strained. He met Ronan’s eyes.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” 

“What  _ is  _ it?”

Ronan gave him a look, bemused, perhaps a little condescending.

“It’s grief, Adam.”

Adam focused on the feeling and yes, it made some kind of sense. He’d thought, when it had happened after the nightmare, that it was fear. But this was too blunt and heavy to be fear.

It wasn’t how Adam’s body processed the emotion. Or maybe he’d just never known a huge enough version of this feeling.

He realized he was still absentmindedly rubbing at his aching chest, staring into the middle distance, when Ronan’s brushed against him. Their shoulders and upper arms touched and it wasn’t tense or charged, as it had been just a few minutes ago. Instead it was comforting, made the pain recede a little.

They stood quietly for an easy stretch of time, until Adam finally felt ready to say:

“So, car shit?”

He almost sounded like Ronan as he said it. It felt like a victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: There’s a reference in this chapter to a book called “The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” that, although I haven’t read it, was a huge inspiration for this fic. Just the concept that trauma, and perhaps other things, make impressions in the body that might remain even if the person in the body changed was very interesting to me. I was also heavily inspired by [this Enjoltaire fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550723).
> 
> Also, the bit about Ronan not taking communion is a reference to [this tweet by Maggie](https://twitter.com/mstiefvater/status/1028815867256229888).


End file.
